Solitary

by Albert Woodfox

  A clear, identifiable bloody fingerprint was found on the entrance door to the Pine 1 dormitory. The state also recovered four simultaneous fingerprints from the same hand and two partial palm prints. None of those prints matched me, Herman, Chester Jackson, or Gilbert Montegut. The print also didn’t match the prisoners who removed Miller’s body or prints of the investigators. It was never tested against all the prisoners who lived on the walk, even though the prison had their fingerprints on file.

  The three men who testified against me—Brown, Richey, and Fobb—were moved to better living quarters. Richey and Fobb were moved out of Angola to the more comfortable jail at the state police barracks. Richey was even given weekend furloughs and had so much freedom over the years that he went on to rob three banks while he was in prison, crimes for which he was convicted. Fobb was given a medical furlough, normally reserved for prisoners who have less than six months to live, and spent years outside prison. He was charged with several crimes during this time, including domestic abuse. Brown was moved to the most comfortable quarters at Angola, known as the “dog pen,” where the prison’s chase dogs were housed and trained. In 1986, his life sentence was commuted and he was released.

  I had three witnesses testify on my behalf. It took a lot of courage for these men to come forward because they were immediately moved to harsher, more restrictive housing after they gave their statements. One of them was put in the dungeon. The first witness for my defense was Colonel Nyati Bolt, who lived in my dorm, Hickory 4, and testified that he walked with me and another inmate named Everett Jackson to the dining hall when the whistle first blew at seven a.m. He waited with us in line during the kitchen workers’ strike and returned to Hickory 4 with us when we were told to go back to our dorms. We stayed in the dorm for about 20 minutes or so, he said, until around 7:35 a.m., when the whistle blew again and we walked back to the dining hall and ate together. After breakfast, he testified, he left me and Everett Jackson standing on the walk talking, sometime after eight a.m., and he went back through the snitcher gate to the boiler room, where he worked.

  Under questioning from the prosecutor, Everett Jackson testified he’d only known me about three weeks. We lived in the same dorm but hadn’t talked until I questioned him about my writ. “Woodfox and I talked about the possibility of my filing a writ for him this same morning, so this is the reason we were together that morning,” he said. He repeated everything Bolt said, adding that after Bolt left us on the walk after breakfast I walked with him to the control center, directly across from the dining hall, where he went inside to the legal aid office for legal papers to give me. It took “eight or ten minutes,” Jackson said.

  When he came down from the legal aid office he handed me the papers and he went back up to work in the inmate legal aid office.

  Prosecutor John Sinquefield asked Everett Jackson about the period of time between the first and second call-out for breakfast that morning.

  Sinquefield: You turned back to the dormitory; Mr. Woodfox was with you all of this time?

  Jackson: Yes, he was. He was with me all this time.

  Sinquefield: You all didn’t stop off over at Pine one, did you?

  Jackson: Negative.

  Sinquefield: You didn’t stop over there and hit a pig or nothing like that.

  Jackson: What’s a pig huh?

  Sinquefield: Did you?

  Jackson: What’s a pig?

  Sinquefield: I think it’s street talk, it’s generally referred to as a policeman, a security officer or something of that nature; is that correct?

  Jackson: No we didn’t stop anytime and didn’t hit a pig.

  Sinquefield: But you know what a “pig” is.

  Jackson: I don’t know what your definition of a pig is; I know what mine is.

  Sinquefield: What’s your definition of one?

  Jackson: It’s a little animal that has four feet.

  The judge interrupted Sinquefield’s line of questioning, saying not to use the term “pig” in his courtroom. When Sinquefield continued he asked Everett Jackson if I killed Brent Miller.

  Jackson: No. Negative.

  Sinquefield: He didn’t leave your presence at any time?

  Jackson: No he didn’t.

  Sinquefield: You didn’t see him with no knives or nothing like that?

  Jackson: No.

  Sinquefield: You didn’t see no blood on his clothes?

  Jackson: Negative.

  Sinquefield: He didn’t say nothing about killing nobody or stabbing nobody over there in Pine one?

  Jackson: No, not to me, he didn’t.

  Sinquefield: And you didn’t see him do nothing?

  Jackson: No.

  Sinquefield: Didn’t hear nobody hollering over there and begging for help?

  Jackson: No.

  Sinquefield: —or nothing like that in Pine one?

  Jackson: No, no.

  Sinquefield: Do you think you would have heard it if it went on?

  Jackson: I most certainly would have. So would three thousand others approximately.

  * * *

  Sinquefield: He didn’t sneak off at no time?

  Jackson: He couldn’t possibly have.

  Sinquefield: He didn’t go over there and commit no murder in Pine one there while you wasn’t looking, huh?

  Jackson: He didn’t do it.

  Everett Jackson was asked why he was no longer working on my case. “He’s in one part of the prison and I’m in another,” he said. “I can’t see him or hear from him, so consequently I can’t file it.”

  On cross-examination, he stated he was moved to a cellblock from the dorm after giving the statement that he was with me the morning of Brent Miller’s murder.

  Herbert “Fess” Williams, who lived in Pine 4, also testified for my defense. He said he was there, on the walk, between 7:45 and 8 a.m. and did not see me on the walk that morning and didn’t see any of the state’s so-called witnesses who said they were there. Herbert Williams’s job was picking up trash in the four Pine dormitories and he patrolled up and down the walk with his trash wagon looking for garbage. On the morning of Brent Miller’s murder, Williams testified, he didn’t leave Pine 4 on the first call-out for breakfast. When the whistle blew for the second call-out, around 7:35 or 7:40, he testified, he left his dorm and walked toward the dining hall, looking for his trash wagon, which he said wasn’t where he normally parked it, in the grass next to Pine 4. He said the wagon wasn’t on the walk, in front of the Pine 1 dorm (contradicting Joseph Richey, who said I bumped into the trash wagon when I ran out of Pine 1), and it wasn’t anywhere else he could see so he started walking toward the dining hall looking for it because sometimes crippled prisoners used it to get to the dining hall. On his way to the dining hall, he testified, he ran into Hezekiah Brown coming toward him, holding a plastic bag that contained sugar. He said he knew it was sugar because, “I was trying to get it from him.” He said Brown was wearing “some kind of pajama top.”

  Williams testified that after he gave a statement to authorities that I wasn’t at the scene of Miller’s murder he was put in the dungeon and then “interrogated” four more times. In the dungeon, where he was in a single cell with four or five other men and no bed, he had his teeth knocked out when another prisoner “accidentally” elbowed him. Then he was put in a cellblock where he was locked down 23 hours a day. When my lawyer, Charles Garretson, asked him on the stand about his experience being “questioned” by prison officials, Williams corrected him and said that he was “interrogated” five times. He repeated several times that he didn’t see me on the walk that morning, and he didn’t see Herman or Chester Jackson or Gilbert Montegut. After the second time he was interrogated, “they locked me up,” he said.

  “Where did they lock you up?” Garretson asked.

  “They locked me up in solitary confinement.”

  “For how long?”

  “I been there ever since. I’m there now.”

  “You’re in
solitary confinement?

  “Yes, sir.”

  Prosecutors Picou and Sinquefield objected and tried to get Williams to say he wasn’t put in solitary confinement. Williams testified that he was initially put in the dungeon for two or three weeks, then in the cellblock, which, to him, was no different from the dungeon—or “solitary confinement”—except in the cellblock he had a bed.

  Picou then, out of the blue, asked Williams, “Do you know who I am?” reminding Williams that he was district attorney for West Feliciana Parish, which “covered Angola prison.” He then asked Williams again if he was on the walk that morning. Yes, Williams said.

  “And you were right there in the area?” Picou asked.

  “I was right there in the area.”

  “You did not go to breakfast.”

  “I did not go to breakfast.”

  “Everybody went to breakfast except for maybe one or two or three people; is that true?”

  “I don’t know about the one or two; I didn’t go.”

  “But you were there.”

  “I was right there in the vicinity.”

  “Who else—who else was there?”

  “Had a white boy in that area.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “I don’t even know his name. He don’t even live there. He live up—he live in the quarters up above us.”

  The district attorney changed the subject. The white prisoner, who may or may not have been on the walk the morning Brent Miller was killed, was never mentioned again.

  A prisoner named Larry Robinson testified he saw Hezekiah Brown at the blood plasma unit at 7:45 in the morning, the exact same time Brown testified that he was witnessing Brent Miller’s murder. When asked how he knew it was 7:45 in the morning Robinson replied he had checked his watch because he was trying to get out of fieldwork that morning and he was supposed to be at the sally port at 7:45. Another witness for me, Clarence Sullivan, who worked in the scullery, testified that Paul Fobb couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of him and was always bumping into things.

  At the end of my trial the jurors were told by the judge to “hold the State to its burden of proof” and that “if the evidence did not establish beyond a reasonable doubt” that I was guilty of killing Brent Miller, the jury had to return a verdict of not guilty. As I sat there and looked at the jury, there was no doubt in my mind that they would come back with a guilty verdict. They deliberated less than an hour. The verdict was guilty. I would be sentenced to life in prison. I remember thinking they would not break me. I wouldn’t let them break me, no matter what.

  After my trial, I was held at the courthouse until dark. They loaded me into a prison van and two deputies sat on either side of me in the backseat with shotguns on their laps. Two armed sheriffs sat in the front. None of them said anything to me about where we were going but I could tell we were not driving toward Angola. We were headed out into the woods. I wondered if they were looking for a place to kill me. After some time, they pulled up in front of the West Feliciana Parish jail. The two in front got out and in a little while came back to the car. Nothing was said to me directly. After that they drove me to Angola. I don’t know if they had an official reason to take me there or if they were just trying to scare the shit out of me.

  “Baby, you all right?” my mom asked me on her first visit after I was convicted.

  I was back at Angola. We were in the visiting room of CCR. I lied to her through the screen between us.

  “Yeah, Mama, it’s OK. I’m going to be all right,” I told her.

  I didn’t let any worries show on my face or in my actions.

  “I’m going to get a new trial,” I said.

  I didn’t believe I would get a new trial but I didn’t want to visit my pain and suffering upon my mom or my family. When my family visited I always went to great lengths to put my best face forward.

  Back in my cell, I did the same. I’d been framed for murder, persecuted at my trial, and wrongfully convicted. But I didn’t feel like a sacrificial lamb. I felt like a member of the Black Panther Party. If anything, I had become more of a revolutionary than I was before. In September of that year, 1973, I wrote to a friend:

  I view Amerikkka . . . and her lies, capitalism, imperialism, racism, exploitation, oppression, and murder of the poor and oppressed people as being highly extreme. It is my opinion that anyone who views these situations as anything other than extreme is a petty bourgeois or a capitalistic fool!! History has taught us that revolution is a violent thing, but a highly necessary occurrence of life. Revolution is bloodshed, deaths, sacrifices, hardships, nothing can and will change that. The passing out of pamphlets is only a method of avoiding the unavoidable. It is the job of the revolutionary forces in this country to manufacture revolution instead of trying to avoid it.

  Chapter 21

  Herman’s Trial, 1974

  After my conviction in 1973, Herman wrote to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (NAACP LDF) about the fact that we were indicted by a grand jury that excluded women and blacks. A lawyer from the NAACP LDF named Norbert Simmons came to see him and agreed he had a claim. He agreed to represent Herman on this issue and filed a motion to quash his indictment. Judge Edward Engolio, of the 18th Judicial District Court, granted the motion, which meant that everyone indicted by that particular grand jury—26 people in all—were no longer indicted. At first, lawyers for the state appealed the ruling. Then the state withdrew its appeal and reindicted everyone who had been indicted by that particular grand jury (except for me; since I had already been convicted I wasn’t on their radar). There was another problem with the way the new grand jurors who reindicted Herman, Chester Jackson, and Gilbert Montegut were selected, but that wouldn’t come to light until years later. Meanwhile, the motion I had filed the year before on the same issue had still not been disposed of; but I was still too new to the law to understand that all motions were legally required to be ruled on before trial.

  Herman, Jackson, and Montegut were tried together in East Baton Rouge. Charles Garretson, who represented me, was their attorney. On the second day of their trial Garretson, Herman, and Montegut were seated at the defense table after a lunch break when Chester Jackson entered behind the prosecutor and sat at the prosecutor’s table. He had turned state’s evidence, which, we found out later, was his plan all along. According to state officials, he had given authorities a statement implicating me and Herman in Miller’s murder two days after Miller was killed. We had no idea. Garretson also had no idea, and he had less than half an hour to compose himself before he had to question the man he had previously been defending. The knowledge that they had broken Jackson and got him to agree to testify against Herman and Montegut shook Garretson to his core. (Later, he would say, “[I] was in a complete state of shock. . . . It took everything I could glean together to maintain professionalism and sanity and intelligence to go forward after this lunch break.”)

  Jackson testified that he and I had walked toward the dining hall for breakfast alone that morning and we had stopped before we got there “to wait” for Herman. “After [we had spent] about 10 minutes” standing on the walk, he said, Herman arrived and asked me if I had “the weapons.” Prosecutor Ralph Roy, who was questioning Jackson, asked him, Didn’t he mean “the weapon,” singular? Jackson changed his answer, saying Herman asked about “the weapon.” He went on to say the three of us turned around and went back down the walk, stepping off the walk between two Oak dorms while Herman “scouted for a freeman to kill.” When Herman returned, Jackson said, he told us there was “a man” sitting on a bed in Pine 1. He said when we entered the dorm we all placed handkerchiefs over our faces and that Brent Miller was on the bed, facing the “front of the building” (the opposite from what Hezekiah Brown had said), talking to Hezekiah Brown.

  Jackson said he didn’t enter the dorm right away but stayed back in the day room, which he called “the lobby,” as Herman and I entered. Jackson said he was “hiding” from
Hezekiah Brown because, he said, Brown was his “friend.” Jackson described the wall he stood behind as “solid concrete,” which, he testified, he “can’t see through,” and yet from that vantage point proceeded to say that he watched me pass by Miller after entering the dorm to get behind Miller and grab him in a “mugger’s hold” and stab him in the front of his body. (Brown said I stabbed Miller in the back.) Jackson testified that after Miller was stabbed, he stood and tried to walk out the door but Herman pushed him back into the sleeping quarters. At that point, Jackson said, “everybody” started stabbing Miller, which was when Jackson said he entered from the day room. Jackson said when he came up to us stabbing Miller I handed him a knife and, on my orders, he stabbed Miller. Jackson testified that while we were stabbing the guard, Leonard “Specs” Turner, who had been in the back of the dorm, walked by us, exiting the building. Next, Jackson said, Hezekiah Brown walked out the front door of the building while Jackson was stabbing the guard, all of this contradicting Brown and Richey and Fobb. Jackson estimated the struggle with Miller lasted “10 or 11 minutes.”

  He testified that when he left the building, “that’s when all the people from the other dormitories came in Pine 1 and I just went and changed clothes.” Jackson stated that when he, Herman, and I left Pine 1, I ran “down the side” of Pine 1, and he and Herman walked over to Pine 3, diagonal to Pine 1, where he took off his bloody clothes and put them in a trash can in the corner of the dormitory. (Bloody clothes were never found in any trash cans in any dorm after Miller’s killing, or if they were, they were never presented as evidence.) Jackson said Herman found some fresh clothes “behind a bed” and changed out of his bloody clothes. When asked what Herman did with his bloody clothes Jackson replied, “He left them there,” then, “I can’t say exactly what he did with them.” When the prosecutor prompted him with, “He left with them?” Jackson changed his answer, “He left with them,” he said, “out the door, you know, towards the door. . . . He had them in a bundle.”